FIRE-ESCAPE. Numerous contrivances have been brought before public notice from time to time for saving the lives of persons who may be in a building while it is burning. Mr. Meseres devised a kind of chair of straps, by which a person could lower himself from the window. Mr. Davis proposed the use of three ladders, which might draw out like a telescope, and might reach from the ground to the upper windows of a house. Mr. Young contrived a sort of rope-ladder, with iron rounds of very flexible construction. Mr. Braby invented a sort of a long pole, down which a car or chair might travel from a window to the ground. Mr. Witty introduced a sort of bag or case, which may be lowered from the sill of a window by ropes governed by the person who might be seated in the bag. Mr. Ford recom mended the use of a long pole, at the upper end of which is tackle for lowering persons from a window. Mr. Merryweather has con trived a series of short ladders, which fit on to each other end to end, and can be elevated to a considerable But the fire-escape which has come most into use in London is a wheel-carriage sup porting a lofty canvas shoot or trunk, attached to a ladder or frame ; when placed up against a house, a person can get into this trunk from a window, and slide safely down to the bottom, with the aid of some ingenious mechanism attached to the frame. Many such machines
are kept in public places in London during the night, attended by men whose business it is to wheel these machines to any spot where life is endangered by fire.
A Report was presented to the city corpora. tion in 1840 from the police commissioners, descriptive of thirty plans for fire-escapes, which had been proposed by different parties. They were of three classes : 1st. Machines intended for domestic use only, to be resorted to by inmates of houses in cases of fire ; 2nd. Machines to be used from the outside, and made to combine the security of property with the protection of persons ; 3rd. Machines exclusively for the protection of life from fire, to be used out of doors under the sible direction of the police. Among the thirty were Davies's effective but rather pon derous machine ; Wivell's, with the canvas trunk ; and Gregory's sliding ladders on a carriage. Whichever may be the best form in wide thoroughfares, it is thought that the common fire ladders of the London Brigade are the most generally useful in courts and confined situations.